People of the Whirlpool, Mabel Osgood Wright [sneezy the snowman read aloud .txt] 📗

and this budget of letters will go to the post with at least four stamps on it, for since you have yoked me to a stub pen and begged me not to criss-cross the sheets, my bills for stamps and stationery have increased.

"Sylvia Latham _is_ the daughter of your Bluff people. Her father's name is Sylvester Johns Latham, and he is a Wall Street broker and promoter, with a deal of money, and ability for pulling the wires, but not much liked socially, I should judge,--that is, outside of a certain commercial group.

"Mrs. Latham was, at the time of her marriage, a pretty southern girl, Vivian Carhart, with only a face for a fortune. In a way she is a beautiful woman now, has quite a social following, a gift for entertaining, and, I judge, unbounded vanity and ambition.

"Quite recently some apparently valueless western land, belonging to her people, has developed fabulous ore, and they say that she is now more opulent than her husband.

"They were pewholders at St. Jacob's for many years, until three seasons ago, when they moved from a side street near Washington Square to 'Millionaire Row,' on the east side of the Park. There are two children, Sylvia, the younger, and a son, Carhart, a fine-looking blond fellow when I knew him, but who got into some bad scrape the year after he left college,--a gambling debt, I think, that his father repudiated, and sent him to try ranch life in the West. There was a good deal of talk at the time, and it was said that the boy fell into bad company at his mother's own card table, and that it has caused a chilliness between Mr. and Mrs. Latham.

"However it may be, Sylvia, who is an unspoiled girl of the frank and intellectual type, tall, and radiant with warm-hearted health, was kept much away at boarding-school for three years, and then went to college for a special two years' course in literature. She had barely returned home when her mother, hearing that I was going abroad, asked me to take Sylvia with me, as she was deficient in languages, which would be a drawback to her social career.

"It seemed a trifle strange to me, as she was then nineteen, an age when most girls of her class are brought out, and had been away for practically five years. But I took her gladly, and she has been a most lovable companion and friend. She called me Aunt, to overcome the formal Miss, and I wish she were my daughter. I'm only wondering if her high, unworldly standpoint, absorbed from wise teachers, and the halo that she has constructed from imagination and desire about her parents during the years of her separation from them, will not embarrass them a little, now that she is at home for good.

"By the way, we met in England last spring a young sub-professor, Horace Bradford, a most unusual young man for nowadays, but of old New England stock. He was one of Sylvia's literature instructors at Rockcliffe College, and he joined our party during the month we spent in the Shakespeare country. It was his first trip, and, I take it, earned by great self-sacrifice; and his scholarly yet boyish enthusiasm added hugely to our enjoyment.

"He spoke constantly of his mother. Do you know her? She lives on the old place, which was a farm of the better class, I take it, his father having been the local judge, tax collector, and general consulting factotum of his county. It is at Pine Ridge Centre, which, if I remember rightly, is not far from your town. I should like you to know him.

"I have only seen Sylvia twice since our return, but she lunches with me to-morrow. You and she should be fast friends, for she is of your ilk; and if this happens, I shall not regret the advent of the Whirlpool Colony in your beloved Oaklands as much as I do now.

"I am really beginning to look forward to my country visit, and am glad to see that some 'advance season' tops are spinning on the pavement in front of the house, and a game of marbles is in progress in my front yard itself, safe from the annoying skirts of passers-by. For you should know, dear Madam Pan, that marbles and tops are the city's first spring sign.

"By the way, I am sure that Horace Bradford and Sylvia are keeping up a literary correspondence. They are perfectly suited to each other for any and every grade of friendship, yet from her family standpoint no one could be more unwelcome. He has no social backing; his mother is a religious little country woman, who doubtless says 'riz' and 'reckon,' and he only has what he can earn by mental effort. But this is neither here nor there, and I'm sure you and I will have an interesting summer croon in spite of your qualms and resentment of the moneyed invasion.--Not another word, Lucy is waiting to take this to the post-box.

"Yours faithfully,

"LAVINIA DORMAN.

"P. S.--Josephus has just come back! Lean, and singed by hot ashes, I judge. I dread the shock to him when he knows about the yard!"


III

MARTIN CORTRIGHT'S LETTERS TO BARBARA AND DOCTOR RICHARD RUSSELL

"December 10, 19--.

"MY DEAR BARBARA:--

"You have often asked me to write you something of myself, my youth, but where shall I begin?

"I sometimes think that I must have been born facing backward, and a fatality has kept me walking in that direction ever since, so wide a space there seems to be to-day between myself and those whose age shows them to be my contemporaries.

"My father, being a man of solid position both in commerce and society, and having a far greater admiration for men of art and letters than would have been tolerated by his wholly commercial Knickerbocker forbears, I, his youngest child and only son, grew up to man's estate among the set of contemporaries that formed his world, men of literary and social parts, whose like I may safely say, for none will contradict, are unknown to the rising generation of New Yorkers; for not only have types changed, but also the circumstances and appreciations under which the development of those types was possible.

"In my nineteenth year events occurred that altered the entire course of my life, for not only did the almost fatal accident and illness that laid me low bar my study of a profession, but it rendered me at the same time, though I did not then realize it, that most unfortunate of beings, the semi-dependent son of parents whose overzeal to preserve a boy's life that is precious, causes them to deprive him of the untrammelled manhood that alone makes the life worth living.

"I always had a bent for research, a passion for following the history of my country and city to its fountain heads. I devoured old books, journals, and the precious documents to which my father had ready access, that passed from the attic treasure chests of the old houses in decline to the keeping of the Historical Society. As a lad I besought every gray head at my father's table to tell me a story, so what more natural, under the circumstances, than that my father should make me free of his library, and say: 'I do not expect or desire you to earn your living; I can provide for you. Here are companions, follow your inclinations, live your own life, and do not be troubled by outside affairs.' At first I was too broken in health and disappointed in ambition to rebel, then inertia became a habit.

"As my health unexpectedly improved and energy moved me to reassert myself and step out, a soft hand was laid on mine--the hand of my mother, invalided at my birth, retired at forty from a world where she had shone by force of beauty and wit--and a gentle voice would say: 'Stay with me, my son, my baby. Oh, bear with me a little longer. If you only knew the comfort it is to feel that you are in the house, to hear your voice. You will pen a history some day that will bring you fame, and you will read it to me here--we two, all alone in my chamber, before the world hears it.' So I stayed on. How mother love often blinds the eyes to its own selfishness.

"That fatal twentieth year, the time of my overthrow, brought me one good gift, your father's friendship. It was a strange chance, that meeting, and it was my love of hearing of past events and the questions concerning them that brought it about. Has your father ever told you of it?

"Likely not, for his life work has been the good physician's, to bring forth and keep alive, and mine the antiquarian's, dreaming and groping among ruins for doubtful treasure of fallen walls.

"My mother came of English, not Knickerbocker stock like my father, though both belong distinctly to New York; and female education being in a somewhat chaotic state between the old regime and new, her parents, desirous of having her receive the genteel polish of courtly manners, music, and dancing, sent her, when about fifteen, to Mrs. Rowson's school, then located at Hollis Street, Boston. The fame of this school had travelled far and wide, for not only had the preceptress in her youth, as Susanna Haswell, been governess to the children of the beautiful Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, one of the most accomplished women of her day, and profited by her fine taste, but her own high morals and literary gifts made her tutorship a much sought privilege.

"While there my mother met the little New England girl who was long afterward to become your grandmother. She had also come to study music, for which she had a talent. My mother related to me, when I was a little lad and used to burrow in her carved oak treasure chest and beg for stories of the articles it contained, many fascinating tales of those two school years, a pretty colour coming to her cheeks as she told of the dances learned together, pas-de-deux and minuet, from old 'Doctor' Shaffer, who was at the time second violin of the Boston Theatre, as well as authority in the correct methods of bowing and courtesying for gentlewomen. Your grandmother married first, and the letter telling of it was stored away with others in the oak chest.

"Some months before the steamboat accident that shattered my nerves, and preceded the long illness, I was browsing at a bookstall, on my way up from college homeward, when I came across a copy of Charlotte Temple--one of the dozen later editions--printed in New York by one R. Hobbs, in 1827, its distinguishing interest lying in a frontispiece depicting Charlotte's flight from Portsmouth.

"The story had long been a familiar one, and I, in common with others of many times my age and judgment, had lingered before the slab that bears her name in the graveyard of old Trinity, and sometimes laid a flower on it for sympathy's sake, as I have done many times since.

"On my return home I showed the little book to my mother, and as she held it in her hinds and read a word here and there, she too began to journey backward to her school days, and asked my father to bring out her treasure chest, and from it she took her school relics,--a tattered ribbon watch-guard fastened by a flat gold buckle that Mrs. Rowson had given her as a reward